Oh look, only 6 years after Osama Bin Laden fled there and escaped, we launch a major offensive in the Tora Bora region. Rather than petulantly remarking on the lack of civilians to bomb (which is both immature and idiotic), perhaps the Instapundit could think about why we didn’t launch a major offensive back in 2001 when it would have made a difference and perhaps have prevented the escape of al-Qaeda’s senior leadership to Pakistan. You know, back when it would have mattered.
Meanwhile, I don’t understand, aside from the need to reaffirm closely held biases, why anyone pays any attention to a thing spewed on Strategy Page:
August 14, 2007: China and Pakistan has signed a formal agreement covering security arrangements for the 4,000 Chinese citizens working in Pakistan. What this has done is make China a major player in the war against al Qaeda inside Pakistan.
China is a major supplier of military technology to Pakistan, but most of the Chinese in Pakistan are working on major industrial and infrastructure projects. Currently, 7,000 Pakistani military and police personnel protect Chinese working inside Pakistan. In addition, there are a small, but growing, number of Chinese security personnel. The Chinese security detachment works with the Chinese community in Pakistan, to make sure there are no misunderstandings about the need for tight security. The Chinese security personnel also advise the Pakistanis on Chinese security needs, and help get needed technical equipment brought in from China. The major danger to Chinese in Pakistan is Islamic terrorists. Most of these are al Qaeda, and local Islamic radicals (mostly Taliban) who want Pakistan run by a religious dictatorship. Since China has come down hard on real, or perceived, Islamic radicalism at home, China is seen by Pakistani Islamic radicals as “foreign devils” and “enemies of Islam.” The Islamic radicals recognize that China is crucial to maintaining Pakistani military and police power, and keeping the current government in power. So there are more attacks on Chinese by Pakistani Islamic radicals.
All this Chinese counter-terror work is done very quietly, and covertly. That may keep it out of the Western press, but the Chinese are increasingly tagged as major bad guys by the Islamic media, especially the outlets that are pro-radical.
Good grief, that’s almost as horrendous as Stratfor. Now, real analysts would back up what they say with sourcing and evidence, instead of remarking on a buried “about” page that everything they say is open source and verified in news sources. Unless I’m Google-tarded, I can’t find any evidence that China has done any of this, though a security arrangement wouldn’t be surprising. But, as I mentioned the last time the Instapundit went linking worthless crap like it was cute and oh-so-true, this really has no relevance to reality.
China is rightfully seen as an enemy of Islamists—but not because of its old massacres of Uighurs. Rather, because they are not Islamists, they are their enemy. This should be elementary from a crowd that glibly claims to know all about radical Islam. Allow me to quote myself from the above link:
In reality, the reason the Chinese have been dragged into Pakistani power politics probably has far more to do with their close tied to Pervez Musharraf’s than the way they treated their Uighurs last century. Indeed, you can see a very similar rationale behind targeting the U.S. for attacks: it is our support, the way we prop up the brutal despots of the Middle East (in particular Saudi Arabia), that has made us a target for the pent up anger of an oppressed people. The same dynamic is most likely at play in Pakistan—it is the presence of Chinese companies, always alongside Pakistani security forces, that makes them essentially indistinguishable from a resistance standpoint. China’s heavy investment in Pakistan props up the economy. Attacking that investment is simply what one would do if one were trying to disrupt Musharraf’s tenuous hold on power.
In other words, because the Chinese prefer their dictator to whomever it was Maulana Abdul Aziz or Abdul Rashid Ghazi would have preferred, they were made targets. It is internal Pakistani politics at play here, not any grander mission against al-Qaeda. For the moment, al-Qaeda could not care less about China—their focus is on Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
Sadly, the Western laziness of thought concerning Central Asia and its environs never seems to go away. Six years after we woke up to its global, strategic importance, people still can’t be bothered to learn the basic dynamics at play, to say nothing of any grander intentions or processes at work. And what’s worse, those who are so widely read and listened to seem to know the least about what they discuss. Pity.
{ 4 comments }
Josh,
Excellent post. It was the Pakistani Army’s fast alliance with China that prevented it from the Islamists’ ire. So as along as both China and the Islamists were separately on the same side of the Pakistani army, they were okay. Now that the Islamists are out in force against Musharraf, that cookie is crumbling.
An additional element is the Baloch insurgency. The Baloch are targeting the Chinese not because of any Islamist angle, but because they see China as a partner of Rawalpindi-Islamabad that is economically exploiting them.
Josh, I come to this site for informed analysis like yours, but I think you would be more convincing if your post wasn’t so angry. The point that Glenn Reynolds was making with his bombing civilians comment was to rebut the remark that Sen. Obama had made just a a day or so before that we need to change our strategy in Afghanistan from just “air-raiding villages and killing civilians”. He was simply saying that we have a major ground offensive going on which, by his comments, Obama seems to be ignorant of. (not to mention his ignorance on things like PRTs etc.) In any case, you’ve every right to point out the mistakes in his discussions of things related to Central Asia, but your angry tone tends to turn off people like me who are looking for smart, informed commentators on the region like yourself.
Take care,
Debk
Debk, that’s fair, and I’ll admit to having been frustrated while writing this. However, I still disagree with everything the Instapundit was saying—we are not in the midst of a “major ground offensive” (unless having as many troops for a country of 30 million as you could muster for a “surge” in a country of 20 million is “major”), we do rely on air power so much the Secretary General of NATO is requiring the use of smaller bombs to try to mitigate the civilian casualties, and our own SOF have been so ineffective allied countries have begun to ask them to leave their areas of operation because of how they’re turning the locals against NATO.
I explained this in a previous piece, if you’d care to read it (“Obama is actually right”). That is what frustrated me—Instapundit is among a group of bloggers who complain at length of the military ignorance of “the media” while not really understanding what is happening in the countries they complain aren’t covered well. They are just as much a part of the problem as anyone else.
Joshua, thanks for your reply. I don’t think most people go to Instapundit for military analysis, he’s just a conduit to the massive amounts of info available on the Net. You are right that the term “major” is an overstatement. But there IS a ground offensive, nonetheless. My husband happens to be heavily involved in what is going on SOF-wise in Afghanistan and Iraq, so I have some knowledge (not a lot, but some) on what is going on there, and I simply don’t agree that Obama was right. We (U.S. and allies) are doing a lot of things on the ground from the PRT’s all around the country that I mentioned previously to operations by both conventional and SOF forces. Are our operations perfect? Of course not. I can’t speak to the specific allegation that the NYT brought up about the UK and our SOF, and, quite honestly, I don’t trust a lot of what the NYT writes. But even if it is true, it is not necessarily indicative of operations throughout the entire country. You and I would probably both agree that we should be even more careful than we already are to not use air power in a way that risks civilian casualties which not only are inhumane but also hurt our goals there. But to make an over-the-top generalization like Obama made “so we’re not JUST air-raiding villages and killing civilians” is not only detrimental to our mission there, but it is also a statement of ignorance of the breadth of operations ongoing by the U.S. and the rest of the coalition in Afghanistan. And yes, it is insulting to those many troops on the ground who are not going around killing civilians and who are often risking their own lives to prevent civilian deaths. Yes, people should never, ever, gloss over the death of civilians. But people like Obama should also not make massive, inaccurate generalizations like he did about our operations in Iraq. Again, I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree. But I appreciate your insights on the area. I recommend Registan to anyone interested in Central Asia as I am.
Take care, DebK
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